Online courses offer free taster

Edinburgh is launching six new courses for online students, which will offer a taste of higher education for free.

These Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will be delivered via the Coursera partnership - a network of leading international universities which offer short undergraduate-level online courses free of charge.

Edinburgh is the first university in the UK to join the Coursera initiative.

Universities associated with Coursera have taught more than 650,000 students from 190 countries. There have been more than 1.5 million course enrolments across 43 courses.

Video

In this short film, the co-founder of Coursera and academic staff from Edinburgh explain how MOOCs will benefit people around the world.

Access to all

There are no entry requirements for students - all courses can be taken by anyone with a computer and internet connection.

Edinburgh will initially offer six courses, each lasting five weeks. These will begin in autumn 2012. They are:

Introduction to Astrobiology and the Search for Extra-terrestrial Life

Equine Nutrition

E-learning and Digital Cultures

Critical Thinking in Global Challenges

Artificial Intelligence Planning

Introduction to Philosophy

Enabling wider access to excellent higher education is part of the core mission of the University of Edinburgh. We are therefore excited to join with our peers in North America in the Coursera consortium to offer Massive Open Online Courses on topics in which we have particular strengths.